Mit Herzblut dabei ...

The Sinner

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.

Tess Gerritsen

Intellectual Wealth

Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants' quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Limiting Principle

An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.

Ernst F. Schumacher

Quaintly Free

To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.

Wallace Stegner

On A Level

I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.

George Eliot

Experiences

We all need new ideas, images, and experiences far more than we need new stoves or cars or computers.

Bill Holm

Entrenched

We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Happiness

The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy.

Criss Jami

Working Jobs

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

Chuck Palahniuk

Spending Billions

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.

Philip Slater

Principle Of Having

The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.

Erich Fromm

Enemies

Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Better World

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.